Road safety communication effectiveness: the roles of emotion and information in motorists ’ ability to detect vulnerable road users

This study aimed to investigate the impact of the emotional and informational components of road safety communication on the motorists ’ ability to detect cyclists in an urban environment. Different communication supports (audiovisual, auditory, visual) were used to present road safety messages to elicit different intensities of a same pattern of negative emotions before performing driving on a car driving simulator. Subjective r esults (intensities collected with a visual analog scale) showed that all the communication supports elicited the same set of emotions where sadness was salient. However, no evidence was found concerning a congruent physiological pattern (cardiac and pupillary response) either during exposure to com munication supports or during a subsequent driving task. Better cyclist detections were observed after exposure to the safety messages, regardless of the communication support used. This result was confirmed by a better attention management for all participants, as shown by the analysis of the numbe r of saccades per minute, the fixation durations and the speed of head movements and a safer speed management in areas where cyclists were present. The type of communication support is less important than the message itself to deliver some negative emotions. The combination of low-intensity negative emotions with safety messages appears to be an efficient strategy for a successful road safety communication when the aim is to improve motorists’ ability to d...
Source: Cognition, Technology and Work - Category: Information Technology Source Type: research